


i've had enough of living lost

by redledgers



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Light Angst, Lowercase, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21651883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers
Summary: he leaves, she leaves, and yet they will always come back
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 16
Kudos: 69





	i've had enough of living lost

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was originally written for and published in Hellish Zine! 
> 
> _“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.  
>  Your co-workers ask  
> If everything’s okay and you tell them  
> You’re just tired.  
> And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.”_  
> \- Richard Siken

**i.**

when she comes back to the precinct, they tell her to go home, to take a few days off. they tell her it won’t count against her sick days because she almost _died._ so chloe goes home and stays there until she is bored and the walls start to close in around her. she stays there until the third day lucifer doesn’t pick up his phone and then does what any rational friend would do because _they’re just friends, right? they aren’t yet what she wants them to be._

she goes to lux.

the crisp white linen smells stale if she stands there long enough. she stands there too long. the balcony isn’t open the way it usually was, isn’t letting the stiff los angeles air into the penthouse, isn’t clearing the scent of cigarettes that hangs somewhere above her head.

it hurts.

she is sick of hurting.

ella asks her if she’s seen him but chloe doesn’t know if it’s because she misses him or because she _knows_. she wishes she didn’t care so much, but ella has always cared this much. 

maze is cagey, she always has been though, and chloe decides after the fifth day that it isn’t worth the effort of even thinking about asking her. if it mattered, she would already know. that’s what she tells herself, anyway. 

after the first week, she decides it was probably all in her head.

she wishes she believed herself.

it hurts when he comes back after two weeks. it hurts when he pretends that nothing happened to her. it hurts when he washes it away like it doesn’t matter even when he _has_ to see how much it does matter to her.

it hurts less when ella takes her out, just the two of them, and they don’t talk about work or him or how she’s doing. it’s all about growing up and having fun and afterward, chloe decides it’s probably going to be alright.

she doesn’t know if she believes herself this time.

**ii.**

the next time, she doesn’t know he left until he returns, thinks nothing about the voicemail because it’s just lucifer, running away again. doesn’t know — _doesn’t believe?_ — he was kidnapped — _devilnapped, detective_ — but she wishes she had believed him enough to check on him when he didn’t show up at her place. she wishes she had trusted him enough.

it hurts.

but then he drops it like he always does these days, doesn’t seem to care about her lack of trust, and she thinks maybe they’ll go back to normal.

she decides she’ll really trust him this time.

**iii.**

_it’s fine,_ she says, _really it’s fine, we’re just friends_ and she doesn’t even care about birthdays but he leaves _again_ and she doesn’t know what to do.

except get drunk on his expensive alcohol with linda, wear his clothes, and fall asleep in his bed.

she’s sick of saying she’s fine. 

linda tries her best, she really does, and chloe appreciates it. she thought it would be hard being friends with a therapist — _lucifer’s therapist_ — but linda is good at compartmentalizing where it counts. the doctor knows more about the man than she’s allowed to say but knows enough about this _thing_ that chloe trusts her judgment, whatever it may be.

it’s weird. but she hasn’t known normal since he showed up.

_there’s no expiration date on the process of healing._

it hurts.

but maybe it won’t for much longer because he does come back. he comes back and he sits beside her when he thinks she’s asleep, tells her things she knows he wouldn’t be able to say if she were looking at him. as if he doesn’t know what words are until there is stillness hanging heavy in the air between them.

but she has done the same to him, _will_ do the same to him. it seems like they will always do this. maybe they both aren’t quite there yet.

she’ll keep trusting him, though. 

**iv.**

a.

it feels like her world has been shredded.

no, not feels.

was.

 _is_ currently in shambles.

it’s off kilter and she doesn’t know why because he had told her the truth and she had _trusted_ him but still, maybe she can’t truly trust him. not like she wants to.

so she leaves first.

b.

he has never been so bored in his whole life, not like this. boredom, he knows, comes in many flavors.

this one is bitter and tastes of ash.

no one questions her sudden absence because of course she would want to take a break as soon as she is cleared from the investigation.

of course she would want to escape somewhere to find herself again after her fiancé turned out to be a criminal, _a dead man walking, the first murderer._ of course they think these things even if they don’t know the whole story. 

he wishes he didn’t know the whole story.

he wishes she didn’t know the whole story.

maybe it would have been easier if he had left first. left again. left her alone. lucifer doesn’t care for being abandoned. the feeling grates at him, leaves him raw like he had been all those years ago when his landing left a crater in the bowels of the universe. he is so used to leaving and leaving and leaving.

with chloe gone, they have no use for him at the precinct. maybe it’s because no one wants to work with him or maybe it’s because of the ongoing investigation, but it seems like only ella is willing to put up with him. she asks him if he’s heard anything from chloe and if he’s doing okay _._

he wishes she wouldn’t ask.

a part of him wants to accept maze’s offer because they’ve fallen into the patterns of their youth in chloe’s absence. except this time he can’t wash away the bitter taste with alcohol no matter how much he tries. he can’t chase the way she looked at him from his mind.

he wonders if he broke her the way he broke linda.

he feels broken himself.

maze still keeps tabs on what’s happening at the precinct when he stops answering ella’s texts. he doesn’t know why she bothers, but he appreciates it. eventually, ella finally gets the message and stops asking him to come by. 

after the second week of boredom, he shows up to a crime scene.

she isn’t there.

but maze would have told him if she’d come back. 

after that, he tentatively rekindles whatever fragile friendship he has to offer ella, even if she does resume trying to get him to stay at crime scenes. he’s glad she asks. 

he starts to stay just a little longer.

it has been four weeks and he has lost himself already because who is he if she is not there to tell him _you’re a good man, you aren’t the devil._ and maybe he isn’t but he feels more like a hollowed soul, a husk burned by hellfire and doused twice over with whiskey.

if she comes back, he’s confident that nothing would ever be normal again.

besides, right now, normal just hurts.

but then she does come back and he decides that it’s time. maybe he stops leaving, stops running, just _stops_ and stays instead to face what he has spent a month trying to quash beneath self hatred. he has spent so long in denial that it isn't a silly joke anymore. he thinks linda would be proud.

**v.**

a.

and so he leaves.

again.

it hurts—it will never _not_ hurt, she thinks. but she stands on the balcony anyway, thinks about his wings, _the white sheets, the stale air, the burn of whiskey in her throat,_ and something tugs at her heart.

_a couple weeks, or a month, or…_

he may have let silence hang between them for too long, but chloe has something she never truly had before this.

before she turns to go inside, before she shuts the balcony doors, she bites her lip and stretches her fingers out into the empty space as if she can feel the crackle of something lingering there. her gaze flicks upward for the briefest of seconds.

she’s sick of saying she’s fine. 

but this time, she _trusts._

b.

it is cold and lonely atop his throne and _has it always been this lonely even with the demons clawing at his door, even with the whispered echoes of the damned finding their way through the halls of this hellish labyrinth?_ he realizes he can’t remember. he doesn’t know what to make of that. but he is bored in the eons that fill the space, all at once, in the blink of an eye.

this boredom tastes like cold steel and copper and iron, like he is coughing up blood, and he hates that he knows the sensation, hates that _she_ knows the way it feels, hates that she has felt it _because of him._

he also hates that she knows how it feels to choke out words in desperation, hoping that they might cast a net over his being so she could pull him to safety, no matter how true they were.

she would never leave him to drown. he knows this.

but still, he leaves.

**coda.**

he leaves,

he leaves,

he leaves.

but he comes back again and again and again.

he always has _, always will,_ because the thread that finds its way through the universe and tethers his heart to hers makes it impossible to stay away. even when he wishes he could have just stayed away. 

it isn’t fate — because neither of them believe in it — but it is a choice, one he makes over and over, one she makes, even. to come back. to come home. free will in the divine, in the damned. 

he finds her in lux one evening, sitting alone at the empty bar with a drink in her hand; she’d helped herself in his absence, despite the shuttered doors. he would be lying if he said his heart didn’t stutter when she looks up at him with a smile and rises just so to kiss him gently. _welcome home,_ she says in so many ways. _welcome home._

**Author's Note:**

> for an extended coda, check out [i'll crawl home to her](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20343400)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [i'll crawl home to her](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20343400) by [redledgers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers)




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